Admittedly, they agree, they mostly wouldn't touch any of these things had someone simply slapped them on a lunch tray. Nor would they go for most of the other things growing in the garden — including broccoli, Brussels sprouts, beets, raspberries, arugula, cucumbers, radishes, kale and collard greens.

"But if it's presented in an interesting way," said 18-year-old Myesha Bell, "they say, 'Ooh, good,' and they'll eat it. It starts off from a little group, and then it's a chain reaction."

Andrea Mathew knows the reaction Bell's talking about.

She's the school garden program coordinator at Kansas City Community Gardens. And she can hardly keep up with her rounds, getting from school to school to help them plan and manage their plots.

She paused at midweek to try to describe the growing scope of the program. She'd just gotten back from Truman and Santa Fe elementary schools in the Hickman Mills School District and was preparing to head to schools in Sugar Creek and Independence.

Preschools are getting into the game. The Local Investment Commission is making gardening part of many of its after-school programs.

Mathew has seen children at Scuola Vita Nuova Charter School squealing as they dug out the sweet potatoes they'd planted last spring, ready to share sweet potato pie.

"Kids look at gardening differently," Mathew said. "They want to hang out with every roly-poly."

Dorothy Curry can almost say she saw this coming.

Ten years ago, the co-founder of Gordon Parks Elementary School was helping the charter school move into its new home and caught herself staring at a set of raised flower beds — choked with weeds — in the old school building's front yard.

"I saw those beds and I knew," she said. "If the principal and teachers were willing, I knew children would be fascinated."

The experiential lessons in a garden "get into the soul, heart and mind of the child," she said. "All education could be taught from the garden."

More corporations and foundations are catching on, boosting efforts to get schoolchildren gardening, said Mike Metallo with the National Gardening Association. He estimates the association will be doling out $250,000 in grants this year compared with less than $50,000 just five years ago.

More than 6,000 schools are applying, compared with less than 1,000 before.